


fill up your lungs (and just run)

by thestarkinmypants (inlightofvisa)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mild Language, Road Trips, Songfic, Texting, post-s3a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlightofvisa/pseuds/thestarkinmypants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek leaves after Deucalion's demise and goes to the only place he knows--New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fill up your lungs (and just run)

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY. OKAY THIS WAS A PLOT THAT I THOUGHT OF WHILE LISTENING TO "CHASING THE SUN" BY SARA BAREILLES. I HAD TO FINISH WRITING THIS AND AS A RESULT THE SECOND HALF OF THE STORY IS ABSOLUTE SHIT. I TITLE DROP THE SONG BECAUSE I AM AWFUL. Also I am tired. Also also I want the show to use Chasing the Sun as Derek's song while he's away from Beacon Hills.
> 
> GO LISTEN TO IT AND TELL ME IT'S PERFECT FOR HIM OMG

Derek doesn't know why he insists on it, but he pretty much bullies Cora into flying them cross country to New York City. Cora in turn bullies Derek into letting them _drive_ across the many states in between, because, "Number one, I'm your Alpha and two, planes are fucking awful. I'm not riding in some piece of scrap metal waiting to burn across the sky in a scream of gore just because you wanted to haunt your old stomping grounds. We're driving. And by we, I mean _I_ am driving." And that had been that.

* * *

 

They spend about a week in Nevada--Cora had been captivated by the lights and the people of Vegas. She spent most if not every night out on the strip, gambling her self-allotted allowance away ("Yes Derek, I do have self-control, and no I do NOT always lose") while Derek quietly evaded accusatorially inquisitive texts from Stiles.

-Where did you go?

-No, I'm serious. Where are you?

-DEREK HALE. ANSWER ME.

-Derek?

-Man, I thought we were past all this.

-Fine, if you want to play this game, we will.

Derek settles for sending him a photo of the motel's sign. Stiles seems content after that, pestering him a couple nights with what's going on in Beacon Hills. Derek always takes a snapshot of the motel where they stay that particular night, and Stiles doesn't ask.

* * *

 

After Cora gets tired of Vegas, they burn their way through the Midwest. The car breaks down somewhere in Kansas, and it takes BOTH Derek and Cora flaunting their Hale-given assets (Derek puts up with the mechanic's frenzied groping of his ass with a side of eye-fucking, all to make sure that the sleazeball doesn't touch Cora because while she's the Alpha, she's also his baby sister, Christ) to get the car fixed again.

"Well," Cora says, attempting not to laugh as they get back in the car, "I'm sure Stiles isn't going to be happy about that."

Derek snorts. "Please, I think he'd be glad that I finally got some action." Cora just stares at him, her eyebrow cocked in the way she used to do when she was a sassy 7 year-old before their world disappeared in a blaze of ash and lust.

"I can't even believe you two," she mutters, twisting the key in the ignition.

* * *

 

It turns out Cora's right. Derek himself doesn't tell Stiles about the mechanic incident, but he DOES get a very irate text that night after Cora falls asleep.

-DEREK HALE, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

-Derek, using your ass to pay to fix a car is about seventy different types of unethical. You should've gone to a different place!

-Don't you DARE think that a motel picture is going to be enough tonight. I--

Derek feels himself flush slightly as he catches the accidental innuendo. He lets his eyes glow in the dark and snaps a picture with his phone. Stiles doesn't respond.

* * *

 

 They make it to New York about a month after the demise of the Alpha pack. Derek sticks his face out the window as they drive across the bridge into Manhattan, inhaling a giant breath of air. Cora smirks.

"Jeez, no wonder Stiles pulled so many dog jokes with you," she says as she stares straight ahead, flicking off the driver in front of her. She's gotten monumentally better at driving since they first started. Derek just snarls at her good-naturedly. "Show me where you and Laura used to live."

They do a Chinese fire drill at the next stoplight, Cora rolling across the hood of the car while Derek vaults over the roof to the driver’s side. They get a few rounds of applause from some pedestrians who happen to witness the spectacle. Derek steers them through the mess of cars to an older, wizened-looking loft. He listens for a moment after he turns off the car. "Nobody there. Let's go in."

They clamber up the fire escape. Cora picks open the back door with a claw and they find themselves in a cream-walled bare studio.

"Looks like Gemma never managed to get anyone else to take the place," Derek says, letting out an exhale. Cora looks at him strangely.

"Derek, you better not be thinking of staying here."

Derek flashes his teeth at her and dials Gemma's number. The little old lady sounds genuinely happy to hear from him. "Oh Derek, it's so good to hear from you! I thought after you took off after Laura I’d never see you again." Derek hmmms in agreement.

"It's good to hear you too, Gemma. Would we be able to get the keys to my old place?"

Gemma hems and haws theatrically on the other side of the phone. "Well, Derek, I'll see what I can do for an old friend." He can just see the smile in her voice. Cora runs her hands against the walls.

“You must have really loved this place,” she says quietly. “There aren’t any marks in the walls at all. It’s flawless.”

Derek’s throat constricts slightly as he nods, a small movement. He hopes that his heartbeat doesn’t give away the fact that no, it’s not because he loved the place—it’s because it was supposed to be temporary, and there was no point in marking a place that was only meant to be home for about a month. Or however long Laura wanted to stay in the place. Cora lifts her fingers from the walls and waves at Derek for the keys. “Well, since we’re going to be here awhile,” she says, “we might as well go get some furniture. And no, I am _not_ dumpster diving. _We_ are not dumpster diving.”

Derek rolls his eyes and just leaps out the window. Cora sails after him.

* * *

 

 It’s been a couple of weeks since Derek has heard from Stiles. Their last interaction had been back in Kansas after Derek’s mechanic incident, and the little shit hadn’t texted him a single word. To be fair, Derek hadn’t done the best job of keeping in touch verbally either, the motel sign pictures growing farther and farther apart as he’d zoomed closer and closer to New York; further and further away from the mess that was Beacon Hills post-Deucalion, post-Jennifer, post-everything. He decides to take a quick picture as he and Cora stroll through a packed furniture store. He even adds words this time.

- _I’m okay._

Predictably, Stiles responds quickly.

-When are you coming back?

Derek doesn’t have an answer.

* * *

 

 Both Derek and Cora fall into a familiar routine after about a week in the city. Cora’s found a job as a personal trainer at a gym a couple blocks from their apartment, and Derek has been keeping himself busy at a used bookstore. The quiet and the vanilla of aging paper have started to do wonders for his nerves, and every now and then when he sees someone take a favorite book of his from the shelves, he breaks into a genuine smile. It scares him a little bit that he could fall back into this version of life so easily—the life where he was innocent of everything, the life with no responsibilities, no worries of constant death. But sometimes, Derek feels like he’s waiting for the other foot to drop.

* * *

 

 A cemetery catches Derek’s eye on his morning run one Sunday. It’s a square plot that spans a block, peppered with gravestones peeping their heads through the earth. Laura had always mentioned that she’d wanted part of her buried in Beacon Hills, and the other part in New York simply because the city had become so much of a home to her over the years. Derek feels a bit of obligation to go in, maybe just to lay the thought of Laura to rest in the city she’d fallen in love with. He walks through the maze of tombstones, letting his fingers run freely over the etched slabs of marble and granite. The rock seems to whisper back as his hands continue to move. He stops in front of a blank gravestone. It’s cool and hard to the touch, slightly wet with the dew of morning.

“Hey, Laura,” he says quietly as he touches the top of the gravestone, its contoured surface smooth and pebbled with water. “I finally brought you back.”

“Who are you talking to?” a voice asks. Derek nearly jumps a foot in the air when he sees a young girl perched on a stone a row in front of him.

“Oh. I’m talking to my sister,” he explains, giving her a small smile. The girl smiles back, standing up on her seat and the skipping through the air to hover in front of him.

“Well, I think she’s really happy that you’re here Derek,” she says, voice sweet. “Always remember to just keep chasing the sun.” And with that she vanishes.  Derek blinks a few times before touching the gravestone again.

“I’m really happy that you were happy here,” Derek whispers. “But I’m starting to think that I’m not.”

* * *

 

 Derek persuades Cora to quit her job at the fitness center a week later.

“I’m ready to go back,” he tells her that evening over dinner. Cora looks at him skeptically.

“If you think you’re ready,” she says flatly. “Also, you’re driving. I think I’ve had enough driving for a lifetime.”

* * *

 

 They leave the next morning at dawn. Derek sticks a note to the front of the door for Gemma, thanking her and sets his keys and a check for the little old lady in a bowl on the counter along with an apple. Cora yawns her way into the car and is asleep by the time they hit the highway.

The trip back isn’t as eventful as the way out. They don’t stop anywhere for more than a night, and they don’t talk much either. Cora throws up their third diner meal in Tennessee, and they both decide that they’ve had too many hamburgers for about a year.

* * *

 

Derek texts Stiles the instant they cross Beacon Hills city limits.

- _I’m back_.

-Well about time. Welcome home, Derek

-I’ve missed you.


End file.
